Ed Payne, “Unionist Naming of Mississippi Children–Revisited”

In 2010, I published on Renegade South a study of the naming of white male Mississippi children during the period from 1861 through 1880, wondering if certain names might provide evidence of Civil War or post-Civil War Unionist sentiments. Hundreds of African-American sons born during this period were given names reflective of the Union trinity of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Tecumseh Sherman. As might be expected, similar naming among white Mississippians was rare. My initial inquiry produced a list of 54 persons.

After posting those results, I came across several more names, all associated with Ulysses S. Grant. Why had these individuals been missed? The answer lay in my failure to consider the many spelling permutations possible for ‘Ulysses.’ Parents and census enumerators proved highly inventive in rendering the name as Ulepes, Ulissus, Euilas, etc. So I broadened the scope to encompass a wider array of spellings. I also extended my search for those possibly named after the three luminaries into the 1900 census, although I retained only those born within the study’s original 1861-1880 timeframe.

In addition to census data, I queried public family trees on Ancestry.com for Mississippians named after the Union trio. Due to the dubious reliability of information found on public family trees, I only added those identifiable on a Mississippi census and whose public tree name could be verified through census or other records. The new searches yielded 42 additional individuals.

It bears repeating that the table provides a basis for exploring Unionist connections, but does not assert that such connections existed in every case. It was common for nineteenth century Southerners to choose given names out of a store of family surnames. Thus a given name of ‘Sherman’ or ‘Grant’ might simply reflect this tendency. And since the name ‘Ulysses’ appears on pre-war censuses, it cannot be assumed to invariably denote Ulysses S. Grant thereafter.

Further research resulted in my deleting six names from the original 54 and making one substantial change. (Note 1) The revised table now consists of 90 names, of which 83 (93%) were native Mississippians. What follows are some of the stories that emerged from my research. In all cases where only a county is cited, the state is Mississippi. (Note 2)

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The naming of sons sometimes offers tantalizing hints of post-war divisions within families. Solomon Isaiah Durham was born in Georgia circa 1826 and migrated to Mississippi by 1850. The 1860 Chickasaw County census listed him as the owner of three slaves: two males, age 37 and nine, and a female age 13. His household included three sons, the middle of whom was Isaiah, born in 1855. Although Solomon fell within the Confederate conscription age range, no Civil War military records have been located for him. Still, in 1870 he named a son Robert Lee Durham. This would hardly be worth noting except for the fact that eight years later Isaiah named his first-born son Ulysses Grant Durham. It is unclear whether Solomon died before or after the birth of Ulysses. The implied differences between father and son did not prevent Isaiah from naming another child, born in 1885, after his late father. While in his early twenties, Ulysses Grant Durham moved to San Angelo, Texas, where he resided until his death in 1924. His uncle Robert Lee Durham farmed in Winston County and died there in 1940.

Young white Mississippians who bore names associated with the trio of Union leaders must have endured verbal taunts or worse, whether or not their names were actually intended to honor those individuals or not. As a result, name changes occasionally appear to have taken place. Take the case of U. Grant Shumpert (transcribed by Ancestry.com as ‘N. Grant’). The 1870 census for Itawamba County listed him as the two-year-old son of Bailey Shumpert, who owned five slaves in 1860. Bailey’s election as policeman for his district in 1861 would have exempted him from Civil War military service. We do not know what inspired Bailey to name his son “U. Grant” in December 1867, but by 1880 the census listed the same child as Daniel Shumpert. When he died nine years later at age 21, his tombstone was inscribed ‘Daniel G. Shumpert.’ According to family genealogies, the middle initial stood for ‘Grant.’ Similarly, the 1880 census for Itawamba County showed Emily Butler with a son born circa 1872 named Ulysses Butler. Two decades later, Emily lived in the household of a son who reported being born in October of 1871—but who now identified himself as Joseph T. Butler.

Despite the rising tide of Lost Cause sentiment, some sons maintained their birth names throughout their lives. As previously noted, in 1867 Jasper Collins, a Jones County Unionist and member of the Knight Band, named his first son born after the war Ulysses Sherman Collins. That appellation did not prevent U.S. Collins from holding several elective posts in his home county, where he was generally known by the nickname ‘Lyss.’ And he was far from the only white male in the central Piney Woods with a Unionist name. Among his contemporaries were: Sherman Beech (b 1868), Lincoln Bynum (b 1861), Sherman Cawley (b 1870), Ulysses Grant Landrum (b 1864), Abraham Lincoln Lee (b 1862), Ulysses P. Walters (b 1868), and Ulysses Grant Welborn (b 1865).

Given the mortality rates that existed in the nineteenth century, it’s not surprising that some of those listed only appear on one census. Lincoln Bosman was a one-year-old when listed with his mother on the 1870 census of Tippah County. A decade later, the mother and a sister appear in Benton County but Lincoln is no longer found in the household. The same is true of Ulysses Campbell (1869, Alcorn County), Ulysses Cotton (1870, Carroll County), William T. Sherman Haws and Abraham Lincoln Haws (1870, Choctaw County), Ulysses Upchurch (1880, Calhoun County) and several others.

In one case, both the motive for the naming of a child and the circumstances of his early death have been preserved. John A. Klein migrated from Virginia to Vicksburg in 1836, where he prospered first as a jeweler and subsequently in a host of business ventures. Six years after his arrival, at age 30, he married 16-year-old Elizabeth Bartley Day and proceeded to build a lavish home called Cedar Grove. In the summer of 1863 Vicksburg was besieged by Union forces and Cedar Grove, like the rest of the city, came under artillery fire. A pregnant Elizabeth Klein had fled the city and taken shelter in a log house near the Big Black River. There her path intersected with General William T. Sherman, who commanded forces in the area. Sherman was related to Elizabeth by marriage. His sister, Susan Denman Sherman, had wed one of Elizabeth’s maternal uncles. The general offered Elizabeth safe passage to the East under the proviso that Cedar Grove would be utilized as a military hospital until the end of the war. That September Elizabeth named her newborn son William T. Sherman Klein. The Klein family eventually reunited and moved back to Cedar Grove. Elizabeth suffered social ostracism owing to her relationship with Sherman and, as a not so subtle rejoinder, never removed a cannon ball lodged in a parlor wall. In July of 1879, two months before he would have turned sixteen, William T.S. Klein suffered a fatal chest wound when a friend’s gun accidentally discharged.

Cedar Grove

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Roan L. Barrentine, the father of ‘Ulissus A. Barrentine,’ was born in Calhoun County in 1843. He enlisted in Company K of the 30th MS Infantry at Carrolton on 27 February 1862, with his name recorded as ‘Roan L. Barentine.’ On 31 December 1862 he suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee and, after hospitalization, was issued a surgeon’s furlough to return home and recuperate. Family genealogies indicate he married Cecila Ann Dunn shortly thereafter. Regimental muster rolls bear the notation “Deserted the CSA August 21, 1863,” while records on the federal side show him admitted to their lines at Bridgeport, Alabama on 9 November 1863. Roan was forwarded to the Military Prison in Louisville, Kentucky where he took an oath of loyalty to the Union on November 16 and agreed to spend the remainder of the war north of the Ohio River.

R.L. Barrentine POW record

After the war Roan returned home and began a family. He named his fourth son, born in September of 1874, Ulysses Adelbert Barrentine. The name is doubly suggestive of Unionist/Republican sentiment. Adelbert Ames, a native of Maine and Union major general, had been appointed provision military governor of Mississippi in 1868. Two years later he was elected by the state legislature to serve as U.S. Senator. He returned to Mississippi in 1873 to engage in a bitter struggle for the Governorship against fellow Republican James Lusk Alcorn. Alcorn was an Illinois native who had moved to Mississippi in 1844 and served as a Confederate brigadier general. He headed the moderate faction of the Republican Party while Ames led the Radical wing. Alcorn succeeded Ames as governor and then briefly joined him in the Senate. However, the two were implacable foes and made the 1874 gubernatorial contest their battleground. Ames won the political battle for the governor’s office, but it ultimately cost his party the Reconstruction war. As the Republican Party splintered, the Democrats united under the banner of white racial solidarity and took control of the state legislature in late 1875. The legislature immediately drew up articles of impeachment against Ames. Aware that President Ulysses S. Grant had turned a deaf ear to his pleas for federal troops, Ames resigned his office in March of 1876 in exchange for impeachment charges being dropped.

Adelbert Ames

Roan Barrentine’s choice of the names ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Adelbert’ for his son in 1874 hardly seems the action of a man oblivious to national and state politics. No records have been found to indicate if Roan’s political leanings found expression other than in the naming of his son. What is known is that Ulysses A. Barrentine, age eighteen, died on 12 June 1893. The Greenwood Enterprise on 16 June 1893 carried this small news item on page 3:

Mr. R.L. Barrentine, of Hemingway, passed through Greenwood Wednesday morning for Coahoma county to have the remains of his son, John, removed to Carroll county. The young man was either killed or took his own life. There was a woman in the case.

Although the son was cited as ‘John’ in the article, cemetery records of the Centerville Baptist Cemetery in Carroll County make it clear that the victim was Ulysses. Family lore, supported by census records, holds that after the death of Ulysses the woman in question found herself to be pregnant and married a much older man. Dropping the ‘A’ from the father’s middle name, she named the child Delbert.

In his old age, Roan Barrentine recast himself as a steadfast soldier of the stars and bars. He filed for a Mississippi Confederate pension in 1929, asserting his service until the war ended. A year later he was admitted to Beauvoir, a retirement home for aged Confederate veterans on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Roan remained at Beauvoir until his death in May of 1934. His body was returned to Greenwood and interred at the Poplar Springs Cemetery. The change in loyalties reflected in his Civil War records and the provocative naming of his son were long forgotten. His hometown Greenwood Commonwealth observed his passing with the usual encomiums reserved for the dwindling ranks of Confederate veterans.

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The 1880 census of Lafayette County listed ‘Eulsyses M. Wilson’ as an 11 year-old male in the household of ‘M. Wilson’ age 45. M. Wilson—born Massmiller Price in Fayette County, Tennessee in 1835—was the son of Washington Price and his bride Rebecca Wilson. However, Rebecca filed for divorce in 1837 and soon thereafter Washington Price wed Francis Harris. Two years later Rebecca married Roderick Williams. By the 1840s both couples had relocated to Lafayette County. Washington Price drew upon his wealthy family connections in North Carolina to develop one of the largest cotton plantations in the county. The 1850 census showed Price as the owner of 71 slaves and real estate valued at $40,000. Roderick Williams owned no slaves and reported real estate worth $500.

Rebecca Wilson Williams died in the mid-1840s. Massmiller assumed the Williams surname of his stepfather. However, family researchers state that shortly after Massmiller married, Washington Price offered him a significant sum of money to change his surname. This is supported by Lafayette County records which list a marriage between ‘M.N. Williams’ and Nancy Jane Lamb in January of 1854, followed by a second license between Nancy and ‘Massmiller Wilson’ (his mother’s maiden name) in December of 1855. Washington Price died in October of 1855. After giving birth to two children, Nancy Lamb Wilson died in 1858.

When the Civil War came to north Mississippi, Massmiller is said to have sided with the Union and moved behind their lines. He was a blacksmith and, since no military records have been found, he may have worked as a civilian farrier for the U.S. Army. This would have been in keeping with the Quaker beliefs of his Lamb in-laws, who were said to have had a deep influence on him. And Quaker objections to slavery may well have resonated with Massmiller as he compared his own yeoman upbringing with that of his plantation reared half-siblings.

Massmiller (‘Matt’) Wilson returned to Lafayette County after the war. He had married Mary Elizabeth Thweatt in 1862 and they had ten children, including the son whose full name was Ulysses Monroe Wilson. Beside his blacksmith work, Massmiller was a talented woodworker who constructed coffins, for which he always refused payment, whenever a death occurred in his section of the county. Massmiller’s own death came in May 1898 at the age of 63. The son he named Ulysses outlived him by a mere three years, dying in November 1901.

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My goal in compiling the table that follows is to provide an alternative means by which to explore Unionist sentiment in Mississippi. Such sentiments sometimes turn up in places where one might least expect to find it. Such is the case of Daniel W. McInnis, born around 1820 to early Piney Woods settler from Scotland named John McInnis. In 1847 Daniel married Nancy Carr and established himself as a planter in Covington County. By 1860, he had achieved considerable prosperity—at least by Piney Woods standards. Daniel estimated his real estate as worth $2,500 and his personal property at $12,000. The value of his personal property derived largely from slaves. That year the census listed him with ten bondsmen: three in their twenties (two females and one male), two males age thirteen, and the remainder children ranging from two to nine years old. Slavery and the cotton economy made only modest inroads in the Piney Woods compared to other areas of the state, so Daniel’s chattel property placed him among the top 30% of Covington County slave owners. (Note 4)

As a man entering his mid-forties, Daniel evidently did not taken up arms in the Civil War, even though he had a considerable stake in its outcome. Therefore, his decision to name a son born on 22 September 1863 Ulysses Grant McInnis is a puzzling one. It is possible that Daniel McInnis numbered himself among the pre-war Whigs who worried that a precipitous rush to secession would only insure the demise of the Peculiar Institution. In such a case, the naming might have carried the implicit message: ‘I told you so.’ Or perhaps Daniel had harbored moral qualms about slavery even while tied to its economic rewards. If so, did the surrender of Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant in July of 1863 produce some sense of relief that the question was no longer his to resolve?

The war divested Daniel of his slaves. He relocated to neighboring Simpson County where in 1870 he reported his personal property as worth $2,500. In 1880 he served a single term in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Daniel McInnis continued to farm until his death in 1893. His son Ulysses G. McInnis also farmed and ran a cotton gin before becoming a grocer late in life. Ulysses died on 18 February 1942. As census records and his death certificate confirm, he never sought to change the Unionist name given him by his slave-owning father.

Ulysses McInnis death certificate

This is only a small sampling of the stories beginning to emerge from inquiries into the background of Unionist named children. I hope to provide more as my research continues.

— Ed Payne

Notes:

1. Three persons were removed from the original list after World War I draft registration cards confirmed they were named after Sherman Parisot, the owner of a steamboat line during Reconstruction: Sherman P. Kirkead, Sherman Parasot (aka Parisot), and Sherman P. Wilson. Both Grant Robinson and Grant Thompson were removed when further research showed them to be African-American and thus outside the scope of this research. Grant Taylor was eliminated when the full name of this father was found to be John Grant Taylor, making him a namesake. The original table listed “William, Abraham L.” based upon an Ancestry transcription error. The household surname was Haws, but the sibling listed above Abraham was recorded as “William, T.S.” and this erroneous surname applied to the next two persons. The original census page image revealed that the individual’s actual name was William T.S. Haws. Thus the Haws household in fact contained two children with Unionist names: one honoring William T. Sherman and the other Abraham Lincoln. Both are listed in the revised table.

2. Several sources are gratefully acknowledged. For information on Cedar Grove and William T.S. Klein: “Cedar Grove, A Man’s Monument” by Paul Duval and “Cedar Grove: National Register of Historical Places Inventory—Nomination Form.” Both are located in the vertical file folder “Cedar Grove” at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. For information on Massmiller Wilson: genealogical file compiled by Mary Lois S. Ragland dated 07/29/1995 and posted on the Ancestry Public Tree ‘Lewis & Bradford Family Tree’; and communications with descendant Patricia Williams. For information on Washington R. Price: biographical sketch by Eva Crocket posted on “Find A Grave” 08/29/2006, Memorial # 15551855. A balanced account of the rivalry between Adelbert Ames and John Lusk Alcorn, and its political consequences, can be found in Warren A. Ellem, “The Overthrow of Reconstruction in Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History, 1992 54(2), 175-201.

3. A different Daniel McInnis (1845-1926) enlisted in the Union 1st New Orleans Infantry in 1864. His full name was Daniel Henry Clay McInnis and he was the son of John (“Jack”) McInnis (1816-1899) who migrated into the Piney Woods from North Carolina. Daniel W. McInnis, on the other hand, consistently reportedly that his father had been born in Scotland. While both families are said to have originated in Argyllshire, Scotland, any relationship would have been distant.

4. In 1860 there were 204 slave owners in Covington County among a free white population of 2,845. Slaves comprised 35.5% of the county’s population compared with a statewide average of 55.2%. Of the 204 slave owners, 145 (71.1%) held nine or few bondsmen.

Thanks for the information! My late husband’s great-grandfather was one of John Alexander Klein’s brothers. We had heard different versions of the story about William Tecumseh Sherman Klein. Yours was most accurate and also gave me a fact which I didn’t have: that the Kleins stayed in a log house near the Big Black River during the seige of Vicksburg. Now the passage about the Kleins in Sherman’s autobiography makes sense!

Ulysses Grant McInnis, a 3-great uncle of mine on the Magee side, as well as a cousin on my McInnis side, married a granddaughter of Robert Magee.

An interesting item I want to relate is that Ulysses Grant McInnis went through life as “Lish” McInnis. I can only imagine the political and cultural climate of post-Civil War Mississippi encouraged the use of this nickname, which also probably grew out of the Piney Woods pronunciation of Ulysses as “yoo-LISH-is.”

Another item of note is that my 3-great grandfather, Joseph McInnis, who was a brother of Daniel McInnis (thus, Lish’s uncle), named one of his sons Henry Clay McInnis (b. 1860).

Also, while researching other surnames, I came across a 19th-century source in Google books that related an incident wherein it was indicated Daniel McInnis was serving the post-war military government in a position at Mount Carmel. I want to say it was something about being a poll-watcher. Unfortunately, I did not bookmark it, and I’m unable to relocate it as yet.

It seems, at the least, the western Covington County branch of the McInnis family possibly showed Whig tendencies in a heavily Democratic part of the state. In fact, I remember a letter from the 1830s or 1840s, in the McLaurin papers, that related the fact that the “Whig cause” was gaining steam in the western part of the county. As you know, the Bouie Creek corridor, with its rich bottomlands, was the wealthiest part of the county, and home to several plantations, including those of the Magees and McLaurins.

I’ve often said that, when I finish the Magee book, I’m going for the Covington County McInnis clan. They have always intrigued me.

When I looked into the delegates who attended the Mississippi Convention on Secession, one thing that struck me is that those few who voted against leaving the Union either came from counties with comparatively low percentages of slave population (Perry, Tishomingo) or, conversely, rather high percentages (Adams, Amite, Warren, and Washington).

Natchez, Vicksburg, and a few other areas had a significant population of pre-war Whigs. Others existed in smaller numbers in the cotton producing regions. These were men (usually) who had engaged in cotton production for decades. Some had seen first hand the industrial might of the North. They were conservatives in the sense of eschewing any rash course of action. They viewed the secessionist Fire-Eaters of the 1850s as dangerous rabble-rousers. While these men were disturbed by the election of Abraham Lincoln, they felt it did not fundamentally threaten the right of Southerners to own slave property — a right that had made them very rich. But any attempt to secede from the Union would place all this at risk. In this sense they demonstrated far more prescience than many others, North or South.

In the 10 years after the war ended, some of these antebellum Whigs became scalawag Republicans, such as plantation owner John L. Alcorn. They enjoyed a brief ascendency to power between 1868 and 1874. But the gradual removal of Union military forces and other factors produced a tipping point. In 1875 the Democrats successfully made white supremacy and racial solidarity the political litmus tests they would remain for nearly a century. As one Democrat later stated, they achieved control at the ballot box by “revolutionary means.” Noting the disinclination of the North to intervene further, within short time the former Whigs entered the Democratic tent.

If Daniel McInnis left letters or diaries, they might offer fascinating insights into this period. Hope we can get together to discuss your continuing research on Covington County.

Solomon Isaiah reported on “free pages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~clear creek/durham_solomon-Isaiah.html” died 1880. Three years after the birth of Ulysses Grant Durham. He had a son named Grady U. G. Durham ..my husband is named Grady Eugene Durham Jr. His mother named him after his dad. She told the story she thought the U. G. Was Eugene as she heard it spoken. So it was a mistake on her part as his dad was named after his dad Grady Ulysses Grant. Most of my husbands early life he was called Gene Junior. In his later years Grady. We did not know the origin of the name. Grady did not know his grandfather, but did know his grandmother as she lived into her 90 ‘s and was known as Mama Durham. He did not know his family history on his father’s side until recently. Ulysses Grant and Martha Jane also had a daughter Earline Durham Baker that mat still be living in the Houston, Texas area. Hope this helped some.